The VR painting tool just got even better. Part of what keeps us coming back to Tilt Brush all the time is seeing what others are able to do with the 3D painting tool. While it can be as simple as choosing from a variety of brushes, colors, and effects to begin painting, we constantly

The first time I played Second Life I saw someone flying down the street naked over an impromptu group of strangers engaged in a poetry reading session right in the middle of a digital replica of Times Square. It was at once shockingly terrifying but acutely beautiful. That mixture was at the core of what Second Life truly was on a surface level for most that tried it, but underneath all that was a thriving community that existed entirely digitally.

It was ahead of its time in many ways, establishing one of the first widely accessed and engaging social virtual worlds that millions of people from all across the planet would visit and enjoy. While it may have been called Second Life, for many it became their primary existence. They’d go to work in Second Life, hang out with friends in Second Life, and other than the need to eat and sleep in the real world, they’d more or less live inside Second Life.

VR doesn’t have anything like that yet. We’re not quite at Ready Player One Oasis levels of immersion and addiction, but the groundwork is established to take us there. The ambitions may not be that high, publicly speaking, for new social VR application Sinespace, but the potential for such ambitions are certainly there.

We recently got the chance to talk with Adam Frisby, co-founder and Chief Product Officer for Sinespace, about their VR app and the name that it’s made for itself. The UK-based company quietly launched in 2017 and has since gone on to be immediately generate revenue for not only the company itself, but for users as well. He’s describing Sinespace as a “virtual world platform built for developers” and it shows.

They’re currently sitting at approximately 10,000 monthly active users across all Unity-enabled devices (that means PC, Mac, Linux, browsers, and viewing capabilities on mobile) with about 10% of those users being in VR, primarily Rift and Vive. Sinespace is mostly a third-person experience, but if you’re in VR, the view shifts to first-person.

That isn’t a lot of VR users right now, but it still puts them just below VRChat and Rec Room in terms of sheer reach and size. Considering they’ve barely made a peep in North America and aren’t even on Steam yet, that’s pretty impressive.

But most importantly is that the business is making money for itself and its users already. On average, a user currently spends about $17 per month in Sinespace. That’s a lot more than the $0 people spend in Rec Room at the moment, for example. And of all users that have returned to the app after trying it for the first time, they typically average just over two hours per day inside Sinespace.

Frisby and his team are no stranger to creating social, virtual worlds. Not only has he been building those sorts of frameworks for over 20 years on his own, but he actually built two businesses inside of Second Life itself several years ago that earned over seven figures

We don’t cover a whole lot of crowd-funded VR games here because of how volatile, uncertain, and frankly underwhelming a lot of those projects end up being, but Chiaro from Martov Co. just looked too promising to ignore. The quaint, picturesque environments, charming story about bringing machines to life, and clever puzzle-focused mechanics were enough to gain our interest. In fact, the game won an award from the NVIDIA Edge Program too.

In Chiaro and the Elixir of Life you play in the first-person view as the titular character, Chiaro, with mechanics that are loosely inspired by the non-combat sections of Zelda, which means lots of environmental puzzle solving. Visually, it evokes a style reminiscent of Studio Ghibli films with a modern twist.

The game takes place in a world called Neverain as you bring machines to life to solve increasingly complex puzzles. From what I’ve seen it’s giving off an Obuction meets Xing meets The Gallery vibe, which is all very good company to be in for this genre.

As of the time of this writing there’s about a week left for funding and they’ve raise just over half of their target funds. They’re asking for $7,523 and have amassed about $4,000. It’s not a massive goal so it’s still very much within reach.

If you’d like, you can donate to the Kickstarter campaign right here. Let us know what you think of the game based on the video and screenshots down in the comments below!

Seeking Dawn, a new first-person shooter (FPS) from Multiverse, is arriving on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in just over two weeks’ time on July 12th for $39.99. A PSVR release is set to follow later on in the year.

Multiverse claims that Seeking Dawn is a full-length VR game with around 20 hours of single-player content. Players sign up to investigate an alien world infested with hostile forces, soon finding themselves neck-deep in an intergalactic war. The campaign includes full co-op support so your friends can join the battle, too.

Along with motion-controlled gunplay, you’ll be able to build your own base to protect from invaders and craft new weapons and equipment.

As a pre-order incentive, the first 500 people to pick the game up via an official website will get into the game’s closed beta. Come release day, you’ll be able to pick it up on both Steam and Oculus Home.

We’ll be very interested to see how Seeking Dawn turns out; its developers have been promising big things for some time but we really haven’t seen much of it yet. As you can see in the gameplay trailer above, though, it sure does look pretty.

You might wonder why third-person games are really a thing in VR, though titles like Moss and Edge of Nowhere provide more than enough reasons. PSVR’s Astro Bot: Rescue Mission is also aiming to provide a few of its own.

According to the PlayStation Blog, every level of this upcoming platformer will feature moments that could only be achieved in VR. The blog, for example, details a level set inside the body of a whale that swallows the tiny robot players control.

“This massive wave will smash into your face,” Creative Director Nic Doucet told the site. “Our system can scale up a wave for a VR moment, or scale it down for a gameplay moment.”

You can see a little of what Doucet is talking about in the video above. These ‘VR moments’ will include huge boss fights that really capitalize on the sense of scale VR brings to the table. There’s also unique moments of player-character interaction, like firing ninja starts from your Dualshock 4 controller to create platforms for your robot to jump on.

No word on a release date for Astro Bot just yet, but we’re keeping an eye out.